Microsoft News Tracker

Mary Jo Foley follows up on today’s WinFS Beta 1 story with an interview with Quentin Clark, director of program management for WinFS:

Clark said Microsoft still is not committing to a final ship date or delivery mechanism for WinFS. But it will not be part of Vista when it ships next year.
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There is no technology dependency between WinFS and other Vista or Longhorn Server subsystems, Clark said.
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There is also a strategy connection between WinFS and Windows Workflow Foundation, the workflow-automation subsystem that Microsoft is planning to build into future iterations of Windows, starting with Longhorn Server. Windows Workflow Foundation is the technology formerly known as WinOE (and later, Windows Workflow Services).
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Clark also characterized as a “strategy conection” the link between Microsoft Business Framework (MBF) and WinFS.

More by following the link.

Elizabeth Montalbano of IDG got a slightly different story for PC World:

WinFS will not be a part of the next version of Windows, Windows Vista, when it ships at the end of next year, but will be available to the operating system as an add-on release sometime in 2007, says Quentin Clark, director of program management for WinFS at Microsoft.

Barbara Darrow at CRN also interviewed Clark:

Clark said not to expect any more Community Technical Previews (CTPs) or beta releases of WinFS between PDC 2005 and next year.

More links: WinFS Developer Center and Channel 9 video.